The New York City subway makes Manhattan less of a concrete jungle

A co-worker sent a link to the office recently from the website frumination entitled “What’s Capacity Got to Do with My City?”, and as a public transportation lover, I wanted to reply all with, “See?!” I get the feeling a lot of times that my fellow New Yorkers take the subway for granted, but as much as I like to complain about it myself, I still think about its awesomeness nearly every time I’m on it.

The author warns that it’s not exactly scientific, but even as a conceptualization, his graphic amazes me. Using the official 2008 subway passenger counts, he found the following:

Just to get warmed up, chew on this -- from 8:00AM to 8:59 AM on an average Fall day in 2007 the NYC Subway carried 388,802 passengers into the CBD on 370 trains over 22 tracks. In other words, a train carrying 1,050 people crossed into the CBD every 6 seconds. Breathtaking if you ask me.

Over this same period, the average number of passengers in a vehicle crossing any of the East River crossings was 1.20. This means that, lacking the subway, we would need to move 324,000 additional vehicles into the [area of Manhattan below 60th Street] (never mind where they would all park).

According to the fruminator, all of the black space below would become parking lots, roads, bridges, and tunnels:

So be thankful for the MTA, because without the subways alleviating the need to cover Manhattan in parking lots, your 300-square-foot Upper East Side apartment might be even smaller.

– Katie Ett, unapologeticallymundane.com

Related article: What's the big deal about an MTA fare hike?